looseheadprop @ 51

I don’t think I know the answer. I have a pretty good idea why the telcos believe/know they need immunity,but whether Mukasey thinks they should have said NO to the Admin–I don’t know.

In all honesty, the telcos were put in anunfair position. …

Now what?

… I’m not saying what they did was right, and maybe they shoulld be punished as a cautionary tale for the futre, but THE BAD ACTORS HERE
…
Let’s not put all our blame on the kid who got aheken down for his lunch money by the schoolyard bullies.

…

Yes, the government made unfair demands — but to let the telecom companies and their lawyers off the hook for going along with them does not necessarily follow.

If you admit they were pressured unfairly by the government then you’re so much as admitting they wouldn’t have done it in normal circumstances and that they are therefore not guilty.

But, as you say they did something, so they should pay some penalty.

I’d say that the penalty should not be terribly large in any event, but that if they cooperate in revealing what the government was doing or what pressure was applied or in other ways that the penalty should be much less, perhaps only a slap on the wrist.

Opposing *this* particular administration would be difficult for anyone.

OT–

NYTimes drops TimesSelect pay wall Tuesday at midnight

(sotto voce) woo hoo

. . .
NOBODY, especially me, is suggesting that Mukasey is not a conservative. Make no doubt about it, he ain’t one of us here in lefty blog land.

WHich does no tautomatically make him a hack though.

Also, there is some evil karma wrecking deal afoot. It is obvious that Schumer traded at least one federal judgeship in exchange for this. The USA EDNY jsut got the nod, the WH has literally been waiting for years for her OK.

But there is more in the pot than just one little old District Judge. i just don’t (yet) have a clue what it might be.

Any NY lawers got a guess?

Your thread post, and this, are off the hook.

Yer on a roll tonite, has anyone offered to pay for yer dinner or buy you a few rounds? Great stuff . . . and thanks.

LHP

Is it more important to get an AG appointed to restore morale at DOJ, or to finish old business?

It seems the DOJ has been leaderless for the past 2 1/2 years, and we as a nation cannot afford another week to pass.

I followed Turley’s arguments, but would also like a functioning DOJ. Or is that just not possible until Jan 2009.

IANLHP but IMHO the DOJ needs to be burnt out, firehosed clean with antiseptic and flushed with some kinda agnostic holy water and THAT will need to be done by the next progressive leadership come ‘09.

For now, ‘we have unfinished busines’ us progressives do, with the present leadership and it’s hacks. If we fail to take the present bad guys to task, the DOJ being leaderless won’t matter squat, the damage done will go into the history books as defacto precedents set in stone harder than the one Merlin buried Excalibur in.

. . . It’s difficult to imagine anyone put forth by the Bush Administration not being a Bush toady. I hope I’m wrong about Mukasey.

Yer not wrong. He’s a toady, and the centrist dem’s are already caving in to Mukasey as even being ‘acceptable’ for consideration.

Feh on this party’s Thugs In Sheeps Wool.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01450.html

Scroll down to Chapter 3, The Judicial Authority.

Article 86:

The Federal Judicial Authority is comprised of the Higher Juridical Council, Supreme Federal Court, Federal Court of Cassation, Public Prosecution Department, Judiciary Oversight Commission and other federal courts that are regulated in accordance with the law.

…

Article 95:

A judge or public prosecutor may not:

First: Combine a position in the judiciary, and a position in the legislature and executive or any other employment.

Second: Joining any party or political organization or perform any political activity.

Ron Paul is a traditional libertarian, for all the good and ill that statement provides.

Before we get all gooey about Libertarians, please take note of Naomi Klein’s book on The Shock Doctrine. The Godfather of Libertarians and Neo-cons was Milton Friedman. He basically said that the ONLY legitimate government functions were (1) Police (to keep you and me in line) and (2) um, not sure what #2 was. Maybe printing money. When whozzit said Republicans wanted to make government small enough so you could drown it in a bathtub, he was speaking as a Libertarian. From their point of view, the Constitution has a lot of unnecessary crap in it. Most Libertarians were followers of Ayn Rand, and even though they don’t talk much about that in public now, they still are.

The reason for the NOLA disaster is that they really don’t see it as a Government responsibility. They only said nice stuff in order to keep us from open revolt. Cutting taxes for the rich is only part of their tax program. They really want to eliminate taxes altogether. All of them.

So, yeah, its nice that Ron Paul is against the war. But the rest of what he’s against worries me.

Bob in HI

Waccamaw is a beautiful name and I like how it fits with the lake.